Shaken by the Lokayukta report on illegal mining and its explosive contents, mining barons here are now worried that they could be heading for a CBI investigation on the lines of the 2G spectrum probe.
They fear the Central Empowered Committee constituted by the Supreme Court may take note of the Lokayukta report when finalising its report on Bellary mining and this may in turn pave the way for an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into their affairs.
Industry insiders admit that the Bellary mining scam is big enough for a Supreme Court-monitored CBI investigation. The scam has cost the exchequer `16,085 crores in money laundering, tax evasion, stashing away of money earned through illegal exports overseas and involves criminal conspiracy by high-profile politicians with top bureaucrats.
Not everyone is, however, apprehensive about the CBI coming into the picture. Some old players feel the Lokayukta’s report is a trial by fire for the mining industry, which could leave it in better shape eventually.
“The process of purification will hopefully clean the industry and make it stronger. It will be a cleansing of not only the mining industry, but also of the political system,” they say.
A mining baron who has been around for 50 years rues that the fly-by-night-operators and the miners-turned-politicians have brought disrepute to the dec-ades’ old industry which is a lifeline for over three lakh people in the district. Lame-nting that such people have cost the miners dearly, he says they have not been able to stand up to the politically strong mining mafia.
A miner indicted in the Lokayukta report says the mining mafia could not have operated without the connivance of the state’s officials as a miner who applied for mineral dispatch and forest way permits to transport iron ore from the department of mines and geology and forests had to give a share of his production to the mining mafia or go without them.
“So very few miners in Bellary refused to pay up,” he adds.